Is Your Overthinking Productive? Here’s The Test To Find Out

There was a stretch in my career when one colleague occupied my brain full time.

At work. At home. At the gym. At daycare pick up. Mid conversation with people who had nothing to do with any of it.

This colleague was a new hire who’d decided I was in their way. They also had the ear of the owner.

One day they pulled me aside and told me they doubted I had what it takes to hold my own with a C-suite audience. (I was the Director of Business Development.)

I couldn’t stop replaying it, no matter how much I wanted to. There was no off button and the tape kept running.

Turns out there’s a name for it: Rumination.

And if you lead people, you get extra helpings of this.

That’s because the higher you sit, the fewer people you have to think out loud with. Which means the thinking happens alone, and usually once everyone else has gone to bed.

For anyone in that situation now, welcome to the club. It meets at 2 A.M., apparently.

Two Kinds Of Stuck

There is more than one flavor of rumination.

One is thinking that’s actually doing something, working toward a next step even if it’s uncomfortable.

The other is thinking that loops. Same scene, same sting, no forward motion. I call it an energy vampire.

It doesn’t need an invitation, it moves in and feeds on your attention or your rest. It’s been linked to worse focus, worse memory, and worse decisions, because your brain spends its resources on a rerun instead of on what’s in front of you.

The tricky part is that both types, productive thinking and looping rumination, can feel exactly the same.

There’s a solution to find out which one you have:

Give the recurring thoughts an appointment, and watch what your brain does when you have scheduled time to worry.

Wednesday Worry Time

A while back I came across some research on a technique called worry postponement. You pick a time, you tell your brain to hold everything until then, and when the time comes, you’ll sit with it.

I gave it to a client who’s launching an AI startup and was spinning on how to raise her seed round. She agreed to worry about it the following Wednesday at 10 A.M.

She never needed the appointment.

The moment it was on the calendar, her brain flipped into problem solving mode. By the time Wednesday rolled around, her pitch details were briefed and her plan was ready to go.

That’s when I understood what the appointment actually does…

It’s a test.

If your brain starts building the second it has a slot on the calendar, it was problem-solving the whole time. It just needed a deadline. If nothing shows up but the same scene on repeat, you’re not solving anything. You’re feeding the vampire.

I never got to run that test in my own situation because I didn’t know it existed then. But I know the answer now. My brain never found a way to make it work with my co-worker. Once that was clear, I did the next best thing. Moved my energy elsewhere. I handed off the account they wanted and started building somewhere new.

Sometimes that’s what it takes to slay the vampire.

💡Try This

If something is looping in your head, set a time to worry about it next week, even fifteen minutes will work. Then notice what your brain does with the time.

If it builds a solution, follow it.

If it just replays, stop asking your brain to solve it. Find a safe place to talk about it or decide what you can change about your exposure instead.

To knowing the difference,

Laurie